


JWP 2020 #4: A Spanish Perspective

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Introspection, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25082293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: A Spanish cemetery was not the strangest place I’d ever visited with Holmes.  Written for JWP 2020 #4 on Watson's Woes.
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Watson's Woes JWP Collection: 2020





	JWP 2020 #4: A Spanish Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Use two or more of the following in your work today: July, cooling showers, apricots, gillyflowers (which include carnations, stock, and wallflowers). 
> 
> Warnings: Reflections on death, including Watson thinking about death of family members. A bit melancholy, but not as grim as it might sound. And written in a huge rush. You have been warned.

A Spanish cemetery was not the strangest place I’d ever visited with Holmes, but I found it oddly fascinating all the same on that March morning that felt more like July. It was nothing like the typical English churchyard, green with grass, moss, and lichen, and grey with quiet stones marking the dead. My Mary and our son lay side by side in a mutual memorial outlined by two such stones at their heads, with smaller ones at their feet. London and its fogs, cooling showers, and changeable weather felt very far away just then.

There were mausoleums here, just as rich families had in England, but many, many more of them, almost like little townhouses, cheek by jowl. They, and the tombs, were all made of white stone, dazzling in the Spanish sunlight. Most curious of all were the walls. Set within the cemetery, close together, they made dizzying alleyways – and they were tombs, too, with plaques stacked eight or nine high providing details about those who lay within. White walls, white tombs, white stone pathways.

There were bright splashes of color throughout. Flowers of all sorts decked nearly every grave, most made out of fabric or paper, but my nose told my that at least some of the gillyflowers were real. Other offerings, too; I saw pomegranates and apricots along with candles. People obviously cared for these graves, and judging from the number of people I saw, visited them regularly.

 _Tu familia no te olvida_ was written on many of them. I wondered what it meant. Mary’s marker said _Beloved wife and mother_ along with her name and the dates that bookended her life. 

“Ah.” Holmes’ soft sound of satisfaction brought my mind back from its wanderings. My friend crouched next to a ground-level marker set midway along one of the many walls. One long-fingered hand rested gracefully next to the name written there.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes indeed.” Holmes’ grey eyes swiftly raked over me, and his gaze softened with sympathy. He deduced some of what I had been thinking with a look, as he so often did. “Come, Watson. Let us leave the dead to their slumbers. We have business with the living.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 4, 2020.


End file.
